Is democracy the right choice for India?

The nature of knowledge and the mental tools of inquiry, i.e. the models and concepts and ideas upon which one bases one’s assumptions, are necessarily a function of the geological and socio-cultural milieu within which these have evolved. The nature of world and cosmic views and the use of mental processes to solve everyday problems depend largely upon where the individual has lived the formative and deliberative aspects of one’s life. It forms the bedrock upon which one develops the ways of inquiry and the meanings one associates to the knowledge. The western (read European) mode of analytical and logical thinking is as much a product of what preceded this way of thinking, namely the excesses of the Church and the spiritual and with the suppression of individuality, pursuit of rational explanations of universal realities with radical removal of those keen to go it alone, as Copernicus found out. The renaissance was the first stage of breaking this stranglehold. Indeed Nico Machiavelli, who was credited with writing probably the first treatise on politicking reportedly said that all his wisdom was a retelling of old knowledge wisdom contained within the Greek classics, that he had merely reinterpreted. Renaissance was followed sequentially by reformation of the church, i.e. separation of spiritual (read fanatical and violent religiosity) from the political. This in turn was followed by rationalism, the use of reason and logic to explain the mysteries of the universe rather than invoking supernatural forces. The last stage in this process was revolution in many European states as a means of violently purging the society of religious hegemony which the previous stages of change had not succeeded in achieving. This heralded the arrival of democracy, its institutions, which had been evolving through the previous stages of change, and the linkage of democratic governmental management with individual human rights and freedom, where the life and view of every individual was valued. For he had been witness and participant to a huge cathartic process whereby dark and credulous forces of superstition, feudalism and internecine medieval warfare that involved the suppression of one group by another had been in a piece-meal manner smashed beyond recognition. His own intellectual evolution and emancipation was as much the stuff of democracy as the Magna Carta, that first piece of document penned in Lincolnshire and now preserved in the small town of Runnymede by the Thames. Democracy did not evolve overnight like a magical solution to centuries of autocracy, despotism, nepotism and malevolent monarchy alongside parasitic spirituality/religiosity. It took centuries of development which formed the bedrock of civil society in Europe and the Caucasian world. It is therefore not surprising that India, despite being the largest democracy in the world, and Iraq and Afghanistan, the newest converts to this process of governance have struggled to uphold the rule of law for all, basic rights and responsibilities for everyone, and the real rallying cry of ‘Of the people, By the people and For the people. Inhabitants of these nations and their leaders have not had to earn a democratic right for themselves, they’ve been handed it on a platter by those who had little knowledge of the socio-cultural mores of these peoples. The democratic process in India, is conspicuous by its absence in the social and community life. Think of the smallest denominator of social life – the family. There is hardly any democracy there. Children are very rarely to have their own thoughts, wishes and desires; those are censured by the parents, even those beyond the risky choices that children make. They cannot marry of their own accord, they cant choose a partner, nor can they choose to make a career the way they wish to. Whilst the availability of and the capacity of an average Indian to make choices is increasing, its no way the same of his western counterpart. It’s a moot point whether democracy is the best way of governing India?